


Anywhere But Vegas

by Reddwarfer



Series: Standing Alone With You [1]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, The Stand - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, John and Rodney in the Stand Universe, M/M, Minor Character Death, Post-Apocalypse, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:35:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25543723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reddwarfer/pseuds/Reddwarfer
Summary: Rodney finds John on his way to Nebraska.
Relationships: Rodney McKay/John Sheppard
Series: Standing Alone With You [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1850971
Comments: 6
Kudos: 30





	Anywhere But Vegas

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written: 9/11/2011

Rodney taps at his computer, determinedly trying to finish his paper. It's times like these that he questions why he thinks he needs another PhD.

The phone rings and he almost doesn't answer it. He's been holed up in his flat for a week, the newspapers are in a pile on the front stoop and the television hasn't been touched for weeks.

The only noise in his apartment, aside from the ringing phone, is compact disc of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring on repeat. He had ruled out the radio after hearing "Baby, Can You Dig Your Man?" twenty times in three days.

He answers the phone if only to give his body an excuse to move. "Hello," he greets, hoping that somehow this is his advisor saying he really didn't need to revise his thesis. Again.

"Hey, Mer," there's a cough, "it's me, "another cough," Jeannie."

"What do you want? I'm really busy right now," he says, first dismissing the cough as allergies. Another cough is her response, and he can tell it's wet and in her chest and not at all from too much pollen. "Are you okay?"

"Haven't you been watching the news?" she asks, rather peevishly, but he forgives it because she's coughing again.

Rodney looks at his television, coated with dust, and shakes his head. "No. I've been slaving away on that paper for that absolute bastard of a professor of mine."

"There's something bad going on," she says between more coughs. "Really bad. I…would you come here?"

She wouldn't ask unless she really needed him and all the little hurts and fights sort of dissolve, along with any protest. She's his baby sister and the only family he still has. "I'll be there tonight," he says, cringing as she coughs out her thank you.

He turns the television on as he packs, hoping maybe there'll be some answers and he discovers that Jeannie's comment about things being 'really bad' is an understatement.

Rodney's dealt with the government enough to read between the lines. So, every time someone comes on, assures everyone that they have whatever it is under control, and there's no such thing as the Superflu or Captain Trips, he feels a shiver go down his spine.

He leaves at dusk, driving in his 1983 Corolla, hoping to get to her college as soon as possible. It's times like these he's grateful she chose to get her college education in America. The flashes of military presence on television, coupled with a few of the horribly scary reports on the radio, and Rodney doubts he could have fought across the border to get to her.

Rodney reaches her campus around midnight. And she looks worse than she sounds when she answers the door.

"Come in," she says around a tissue. Her eyes are red, her face pale, drawn, and her clothes look like she's worn them for days.

"Jeannie," he says, helplessly, reaching out to hug her despite worries of contagiousness, and that's when she collapses against his chest. He helps her to her bed, and watches over her worriedly until she wakes up the next morning.

The only good thing about Jeannie being so sick is that he doesn't have time to wonder when he'll succumb to it as well.

No one answers when he calls any of the hospitals within fifty miles and after a few days, he stops trying.

She barely can get out of bed and only really wants to hear him tell her stories of when they were kids. He ignores the way she looks like she's on this side of dying and tells her pretty lies about swings and slides and ignores the far-too-light thwack of her hand on his arm and barely-breathed accusations of lying.

~*~

Jeannie dies on June 28, 1990. He covers her with a blanket and turns on the air conditioner. He knows better than to assume anyone will be able to come and take away the body.

There's a stench of death in the air, but he tries not to think about it too much.

That night is the first time he dreams of the old woman in Nebraska. She plays her guitar and smiles and there's the smell of fried chicken in the air. She tells him to get out of California as soon as possible.

When he wakes, it's with tears and sweat on his face. He doesn't believe in God, not really, and he certainly doesn't believe in prophetic dreams about old black women playing the guitar, but something about the whole thing spooks him.

He dreams of her the next night, and the next, but his fourth dream is of _him_. There're promises of knowledge and power and everything he's ever wanted at his fingertips, if he just goes to Vegas.

The next morning, Rodney gets into his car and drives downtown. He breaks into six different stores, steals clothes, supplies, food, medicine, and gas. Rodney does his best to ignore the dead bodies, the sound of gunfire in the distance, and the creepy sensation of being watched. Most of this town is deserted, not dead, but it doesn't make it better.

He can still remember watching horror movie marathons with Jeannie when they were teens and arguing how they could have survived longer, better. Rodney thinks of her when he grabs a canteen, a Swiss army knife, a tin of Spam, and lets the tears fall, because there's no one around to see.

Rodney doesn't need the radio or the television to confirm just how fucked up everything is now.

It takes him two days to get everything ready. He has a hiker's backpack in the trunk, filled with various things for now, just in case he needs to ditch the car. He has two more dreams he would love to forget, but he can't

He's on the road by nightfall after a last day of packing. There's a map with a red marker outlining the path to Nebraska, a picture of Jeannie tucked in his visor, and their mother's cross hanging from the rear view mirror.

A trip he would normally be able to make in days will take weeks, by his calculations. He refuses to pass through Nevada, taking an indirect route north through Oregon before heading east. Most of his travel won't be on the highways, which are mostly crowded and nearly impassible, and he arranges for pit stops to get more supplies when he can. Even with his indirect route, he has to move a few cars out of the way. Sometimes he doesn't even puke when he moves the corpses.

~*~

It's three days before he sees another person.

The man is walking along the side of the road with a long duffel over his right shoulder. He has a beard, messy hair, and sunglasses. Rodney doesn't know whether to stop or drive faster. There's a little nudge at his shoulder and he can almost hear the sound of a guitar on the wind.

He's not going to offer this stranger a ride because of some weird dream about an old lady. He's not. He's really not. He's just a nice guy.

"Hey," Rodney calls out, as he pulls his car to a stop. "Need a ride?"

"Depends on where you're headed," the man answers with a smirk. He's carrying a guitar that Rodney hadn't noticed before.

"Nebraska," he says, hoping he doesn't have to explain the insanity of him going to a place not so much because an old lady asked him to but because a scary guy asked him to go somewhere else.

"That's where I'm headed," the man says with a grin. "Hemingford Home," he adds, and Rodney nods, feeling shaken to the core.

He opens the back door and tosses in his bag. Once seated in the front, he offers his name and his hand. "John Sheppard."

"Rodney McKay," he replies as they shake. "You're the first person I've seen in forever," he says, cringing at how horrible he is at small talk.

But John just nods, looking out the window at the rows of cars off the side of the road. "Same," he lies.

There's a moment of silence and then John amends, "Well, there was one person…he had a knife…and I…I shot him."

"Better him than you," Rodney says, means it, too. "I'm sure that's not the last time we'll meet with people like them."

"You mean crazies in general or _his_ people?" John asks, tuning his guitar. The voice is casual, but the question isn't.

Rodney grimaces. "Both."

John seems to agree, but doesn't seem to want to continue the conversation. He plucks at his guitar, and starts to sing, "Baby, can you dig your man? He's a righteous man..."

With a groan, Rodney shakes his head. "Really, John? You can't actually like that song."

"How about some Cash?" John says with an easy grin.

"Underwood it is," Rodney replies, giving up. John plays for the rest of the morning. Sometimes Rodney pipes in with a request, but mostly he just listens, and feels intensely grateful for the company.

They sleep in a deserted motel that night, knowing it's likely that last time they'll have beds for a while.

It's not just the narrow roads that worry him. It's the people traveling west, too. For all that the bed's more comfortable than his car, he's restless, wondering if his car, and thus supplies, will be gone in the morning.

John tosses and turns next to him on the bed. And he's intensely aware of how close their bodies are to each other.

When he'd suggested they sleep there, John had followed him into the room, not bothering to find one of his own. Rodney isn't too keen on being alone after finally having company, but it makes him think of things he knows he shouldn't.

~*~

Rodney wakes the next morning to John drooling on his shoulder. He stares at the ceiling, watches as a bug skitters across it.

Ten agonizing minutes of ignoring his bladder later, John smooshes his face into Rodney's shoulder further before really waking and sitting up with a creak of the mattress. "Morning. Um. About that…"

Waving it off, Rodney gets off the bed and makes a beeline for the bathroom. "'sfine."

John practically mows him over when he gets out, shuts the door behind him. It makes him laugh, which sounds strange to his own ears.

By the time John emerges—and wow, he actually has a face under all that beard—Rodney has breakfast ready. It's cereal with rice milk. Rodney can't stand it, really, but it doesn't require refrigeration before opening a box.

"This isn't breast milk, is it?" John asks after a bite and Rodney almost spits out his mouthful laughing at the expression of seriousness on John's face.

Rodney's still laughing when he shows John the rice milk box (single serving juice box size) and explains how it's gross, but it keeps.

"So, who'd you dream about this time?" John asks after their breakfast is done and they're getting ready to head back on the road.

"The other one," he replies and tries not to remember the way Jeannie's eyes opened up after she died and how his voice emanated from her body.

John frowns. "Him," he says. They don't say his name, but they can both picture that smile of his, that cold fear that finds them when they see it.

"I'd rather dream about the old bat," Rodney says, "Not that dreaming about some old lady telling me to come to some backwater hole in the middle of the country is something I look forward to, really. But anything's better…"

"Hey, I like Mother Abigail," John says, trying to lighten the mood. "Anyone that plays guitar at her age has got to be good."

Rodney snorts. "And the fact that we're dreaming the same things, even before we met, doesn't bother you? Not that it rates since apparently the whole country is a bunch of corpses now."

John shrugs and Rodney considers the avoidance of that particular conversation a win.

The drive today is much the same as yesterday except this time John plays music he doesn't know. However, he does recognize the sound of someone working on their own stuff, so he listens to the melody develop as the miles pass.

"What did you do, you know, before," John asks during a lunch of peanut butter sandwiches. The bread is almost gone, but it doesn't matter. There's no use conserving food that'll go moldy in days.

"I was in graduate school, working on my dissertation for my second PhD. I already had one in Astrophysics. This one was going to be for Engineering."

John looks at him for a moment before gazing out at the road. "I had a year left at the Academy. Air Force," he explains. "I was working on a Masters in Applied Mathematics."

The question is there between them and Rodney's not sure he wants to ask. John must sense his curiosity, because he continues after taking a swig of Gatorade. "I was motorbiking home when everything started. I didn't even know how bad it was until everything had already gone to shit. Then…I saw things…"

Rodney doesn't need to ask for more clarification. He's heard things on the radio those first few days after Jeannie died. He's heard rumours of the military mowing down civilians, killing reporters, and it scared him, still scares him.

The silence stays with them as they pack up and head back on the road. It's easier with two, Rodney thinks, and they take turns moving cars and debris out of their way. They don't talk much about their lives, instead focusing on silly, unimportant things like debating about Bond movies, Star Trek, and superheroes.

~*~

"I think that's it for the car," John comments as smoke pours from under the hood.

Rodney scowls. "That's just great. It's bad enough that it's sweltering and the New Car smell air fresheners do nothing to mask the eau de rotting flesh in the air. Now we have to start trekking across the country on foot in areas teeming with wild life that'd probably like to eat us for dinner."

John stares at him for a moment before laughing, long, hard, and terribly.

"Great, now the wolves are going to think a pack of donkeys are working their way through," he complains, but is unable to stop from smiling.

"You’re the ass, Rodney," John says, patting him on the back. "We'll find a couple of bikes as soon as possible and it won't be so bad."

Rodney sighs loudly. "Fine. Let's just stay put here for today. I have a bunch of shit in the trunk. We'll have to downsize, but we should have enough to keep us for the trip."

"Sounds good," John says, and walks off down the street. "I'll be back in a few."

When he returns, John has two lawn furniture chairs. He opens the first up and sits down and watches as Rodney finishes removing all their combined supplies.

It takes all afternoon for him to decide on what's necessary and what isn't and then to pack it in his backpack and John's duffel.

Rodney thinks for a moment, thinks about the dream of Flagg the night before, and silently hands John a gun, a thigh holster, and extra ammo. He knows John probably has a gun, but another one can't hurt. He's sure as hell that someone's going to want to hurt them.

That night, they huddle together in Rodney's single tent. There's only one sleeping bag and one blanket. John doesn't seem to mind and Rodney's past caring about appearances.

John latches onto him during the night and he relaxes into the warmth. It's the first good sleep he's had in months, definitely since this whole nightmare began.

The morning still comes too quickly. John says good morning into his neck before he moves away.

Rodney stumbles out of the tent and tries to find a quiet place to take a piss and think. His brain isn't what it used to be. It's slow with grief and stress and fear and needing to survive. He doesn't know if he likes John because he's hot or because he's the only living person he knows now or because he seems to like Rodney back or because John doesn't seem to be losing his shit.

It's probably a combination of all of that and more. And it probably doesn't matter much anyhow.

"Tent's packed and breakfast is ready," John says when he ambles back ten minutes later.

Rodney mumbles his thanks and sets about eating.

When they're finished, John sighs. "Well, we ought to get going. Long walk, ya know."

With a groan, Rodney gets to his feet. "I normally hate walking, but I suppose at least the company doesn't suck."

John smiles at him and throws an arm around his shoulder. "Aw, Rodney, you say the sweetest things."

All the sarcasm dissolves as he feels a small peck on his cheek. Rodney looks over but John's already on his feet and hefting his bag over one shoulder and the guitar over the other.

Rodney gathers his own, grins, and says, "Let's get moving before something decides to eat us."

John's laugh carries him for miles.


End file.
